What's in the Chef's Market Cart: Green Garbanzo Beans

What's in your cart, chef? This week, we asked Seth Greenburg, chef at The Penthouse Restaurant at the Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica.

Greenburg attends both the Wednesday and Saturday markets as consistently as any Los Angeles chef, and it's common for him to walk back and forth from market to restaurant with multiple cart-loads of produce. Recently his cart was full of green garbanzo beans still on the plant, from Jimenez Family Farm.

Green garbanzo beans are usually available from mid-August until mid-to-late September, and the Jimenez family will be bringing them down from Santa Ynez to markets around Los Angeles (see our farmers market map) for at least the next week.

"We played around with them a lot and realized that we like them best when we do the least to them," he says. "We don't even shell them. We just let the pods touch a hot pan long enough to toss them with chile, salt, and lime, and eat them like edamame."

Nutty like a dried chickpea, but with a fresh green taste that is surprisingly edamame-esque, the green garbanzos are at once delicate and assertive, and are an excellent companion to a cold beer from the Penthouse's short but thoughtful list at happy hour.